The Horizon Report 2011, predicted four to five years for the adoption of Gesture Based Computing, so ‘wave’ hello to this prediction coming true earlier than expected.
Gesture Recognition
We’ve seen what Kinect can do with the xbox for games, especially all those well intended gamers ‘dancing’ awkwardly in shopping malls to demo displays. Well now ‘Gesture’ control may soon be used to control a variety of your devices at home, from TV to your operating system including many custom made applications. Steve Balmer (Microsoft CEO) announced this week that gesture-recognition technology Kinect will not just be for xbox but for Windows also, with an early 2012 release. Just as content developers get to grips with touch based devices, the next thing could be coding for ‘Gesture to Select’ eLearning activities. A plus of this emerging technology is the possible applications for those living with a disability, to control computers in new ways. May this journey never end.
Voice Activation
Remember fighting over the TV remote with your housemates (remember!?), well now you can all shout at the next generation of televisions for your favourite channel.
Q. What’s to stop Channel 10 placing adds on Channel 9, that say, “Change to 10”?
With Siri and friends, plus the rumoured voice activated iTV, we’ll have no shortage of devices that want us to speak up to get things done. One application for education will be the creation of more sophisticated virtual role-play activities that allow for conversation with an avatar that also responds to voice commands. One of the setbacks for content development that utilses Gesture &/Or Voice will be yet another layer of coding, standards and applications on an ever increasingly complex array of educational technologies. But it will be fun! No doubt.